Too Cute! (Or: The National Review Eugenics Plan)

You know the joke about Republicans that they stop caring about children once they leave the womb? True or not, it at least suggests that there is an age at which conservatives will not conduct a character attack on a child. It turns out that being two-and-a-half is old enough:

I’m such a meanie that I immediately Googled her and found out that Bethany was recently voted “Tampa Bay’s Most Photogenic Baby.” Once pushy mothers waited nervously in the lobby of a Ramada Inn, frantically applying eyeliner to their two-year-old for the Sunburst International Southeast Regional Beauty Pagent, praying that the treasurer of the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce serving as this year’s guest judge won’t demerit too much for spitting up during the talent competition. Now all you have to do is call you local liberal activist group and boom! Your child books her first national advertising campaign!

I think the author of this piece of propaganda, Mark Hemmingway, thinks he’s being ironic by calling himself a meanie, but what else can you call someone who literally suggests that a child should have never been born:

On the conference call, Dara admitted to me that she and Brian had been talking about having children since before they were married… she took a job at a restaurant with no health insurance, and the couple went on to have a baby anyway.

In other words, he doesn’t hate babies, just poor people who have them. Or, put another way: babies are for people who can afford them. I hope he calls for sterilizations next! “Meanie” is generous.